


Vuk Vepir's School for the Troubled

by wrttn_word



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Band, Cute, Fluffy, M/M, Sad, Teenagers, Vampire!Zayn, Vampires, Werewolves, Wolf!Liam, there is no band
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 10:10:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19827973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrttn_word/pseuds/wrttn_word
Summary: Zayn is just a teenage vampire. Liam is just a teenage werewolf.The love they share is impossible to break, fueled by nothing but the light of the moon and guided by the heat of the sun.Beauty was a tricky thing, but attraction was trickier.Especially when the cat and mouse only played when the sun and moon switched spots.





	Vuk Vepir's School for the Troubled

The sky wasn’t blue.   
It was gray, thunder rolling across the clouds and lightning racing to the ground. The sun was sleeping far above the roof of the building and the stone it couldn’t heat was cold.   
The evening crept up with the grace of a lion, and night pounced with the same ferocity. The students of Vuk Vepir School flooded the walkway, dashing quickly to avoid the rain and any stray rays of sunshine that may have escaped the depth of clouds.  
Watching the students, an onlooker would’ve seen the end of a high school day. However, there was another day that started as the sun set and the moon rose behind the trees. 

The classrooms were small, with warm light breathing life into the students as they began to buzz. They spoke softly, their conversations covering the ambient noise of night, drowning out the crickets that came with dusk.   
Paint was scattered around the desks, brushes littering every available surface as they all being to create. It was serene, and the teacher watched as each students eternity was painted into something tangible, into something they could feel when their chests didn’t rise and fall like their living counterparts.  
Despite being in a room full of supposed monsters, the beat of the humans heart didn’t falter, nor did it race. The children in front of them, creatures of the night, dead risen in the most dangerous of nature, were the gentlest that they had ever encountered.   
Vampires, they concluded, may not be as terrifying as they were made out to be. Full of grace, of pride, of fear of themselves, the children were decidedly different. They would never grow up, never grow old, and it was a travesty. Yet, as the moon continued it’s ascent, the students heads were not filled with the unfairness of the life that they had been handed, just the colors that stained their fingers and hands as they began to produce something wonderful. 

The headmaster of the school made it a point to expose the student body to humans. There were field trips, times for exploration and a countless amount of activities that made things feel normal. Yet the locks on the doors of the dormitories, the individual rooming and the near constant monitoring of behavior reminded them all of the absence of normalcy.   
When the sun rose, the students on one side lay their heads down to sleep while the others began their days, racing each other in a chorus of growls and laughter as they bounced around the campus.   
The classrooms sat nearly individually, yet were mostly empty. The teachers had learned that being outside helped focus, the sun or the rain beaming down was nothing more than a comfort. Nature, in all of its captivatingly beautiful glory, was an element, an essential for these students.  
Werewolves, each instructor had to agree, were the warmer of the two parts of their student body. Not only in physical body, but in personality. They lived for play, for fights, for moment to moment decision. Impulses, especially in the children on the supernatural, were dangerous. Yet, the sight of award winning smiles at the idea of a chase trumped fear and what replaced it was fondness. 

There was never a dull moment, not in a school of this nature. Magic seemed ever present, as well as drama and over reactions. Just like impulses, assumptions were dangerous. Far more dangerous in this setting than any other, where the beating of your heart could be heard by everyone else in the room. It made the days seem endless, long, tiresome, but never lonesome. You are never alone when the person next to you feels as though they were trapped in the same prison: themselves. 

It began with a push and a pull.   
The push of a wolf at dusk, and the pull of a vampire at dawn, sleep driving them both.  
Each only saw a flash of a face, a glimpse of something they were meant to hate but nothing more. No malice, or ill intent, just the urge to find one another when there was room to breathe. A place like this paired with a life so chaotic, love was hard to find, and real friends were harder.   
During the day, a vampire dreamt of warm brown eyes and a friendly smile passing him as the first rays of light hit the earth. As the sun slept, a wolf replayed the fleeting memory of tan skin, a furrowed brow and paint stained hands. 

They met again at dusk, this time a small wave as their greeting as they ducked away, one with heat on his cheeks while the other vowed he would never forget the sight. It was endearing, the way that they were teased, never really being pushed for answers.   
Each day they got a little closer, a little more daring until they finally said hello. 

It was gradual, as days and nights turned into weeks they met at dusk and at dawn, a wolf’s instinct pushing him to ask for a name and vampires hubris demanding one.  
They were kids, playing a game of hide and seek, only to be found with the feeling of falling in love with the idea of forever before they had even thought about what it meant. 

Zayn’s hands were constantly coated with a layer of colors, from blues to reds to greens. He loved to paint the sunsets, even though he saw them briefly. He loved the idea of sitting in the sun, of basking in something warm enough to make him forget that his heart no longer got to beat, and that breathing meant faking the rise of his chest.   
Creation made him feel the way he thought sun might, but only just. It was heated, his mind wandering, fluttering about from one thing to the next as he thought about nothing at all. It made him feel real, and he could only ever ask for reality. 

Liam was another muse of his, all sparkling brown eyes and shy smiles and a heart racing. It had been months before Liam had gotten up the courage to ask him his name, but mere moments had followed when he asked any question he could think of. Zayn’s voice was something he could drown himself in, an accent he couldn’t place and a distinct feeling of home that left him breathless the first time he heard it, and every time after.   
Beauty was a tricky thing, but attraction was trickier.  
Especially when the cat and mouse only played when the sun and moon switched spots. 

Love and hate were an equal distance apart, but the latter took up no space in their heads. Butterflies danced in Zayn’s stomach when he presented his first painting of Liam, and Liam rewarded him with their first kiss. It lingered, excitement pulled them together even as the nervousness of the oncoming sun pushed them apart.   
Push and pull, push and pull. 

Liam’s room was lovingly adorned with sketches, paintings, doodles and crafts that Zayn had gifted to him as the vampire spent less and less time in his own room. They found themselves in each others clothes more often than not, basking in the comfort of their mingling scent.   
Zayn smelled like paint, the cool comfort of tile floors and something vaguely akin to cinnamon. At seventeen, forever seemed even more vast but a forever with something this lovely may just be worth it.   
Until it wasn’t. 

“You’re thinking too loud.” The voice behind Zayn was gravelly and tired, Liam fighting his way to consciousness with Zayn’s head on his chest.   
The vampire just hummed, easy closed restlessly as he listened to the beat of a heart beneath his head. The night had been a stressful one, and after months of seeing Liam in every safe moment, the idea of their eternity seemed shorter than Zayn may have liked.   
“What are you thinking about so hard?”   
Before the words had left his mouth, Liam could feel Zayn’s shoulders tense. He brushed away the remnants of sleep in favor of looking for answers in the new feeling of dread.   
Again, Zayn hummed, avoidance at its finest, and pushed himself ever closer to the wolf he wasn’t meant to love. Liam didn’t let it go, pushing for answers while he dressed himself for the day.   
Liam stood by his door, looking at Zayn curled up in his bed, dark hair spread above him in a halo. Zayn offered nothing but a small smile and Liam left with sigh. 

“What if you stop loving me?”   
It was dusk, the sun beginning to set behind the trees. The air was getting cooler, the sun starting it’s descent earlier each day.   
Zayn stood surrounded by paint in his dorm room, an explosion of color stunning Liam in the doorway.   
Liam had come back to an empty room and cold bed. Zayn had left hours ago, shielding himself from the sun with a jacket pressing into his skin. 

It looked as though there had a bomb set off in Zayn’s room. His desk sat in the corner of the room, shards of wood scattered across the floor. Paint, colored pencils, pens and markers littered the floor, his canvases ripped to shreds against the wall.   
“Baby, what happened?” Liam’s voice was laced with concern, warm and light, and he took a cautious step forward.   
Zayn flinched. 

There was a stillness, as if the earth ceased to spin, Liam standing in horrified silence as Zayn prepared himself to fall apart.   
“What if our forever’s are different?” His voice was soft and his eyes softer, they were so dark, pupils almost taking over the iris. “What if you stop loving me?” 

Liam took another step forward, pushing through the look of fear on Zayn’s face.   
He studied the boy in front of him, the boy staring at him with eyes so vulnerable that it looked like he may shatter. His skin was a warm caramel color, with hair dark as midnight and almond eyes that matched. He was lovely, breathtaking in the best ways.   
“What if I’m not it for you?”   
It was that voice, so brokenly convinced of abandonment that he surrounded himself with an explosion of the things he couldn’t express. 

“I don’t want anybody else. Not for a million and one years.”   
It happened like a flood. Slowly, and all at once, overwhelming and drowning them both. Liam stepped forward again, Zayn crashing into his chest with nothing more than an inaudible version of Liam’s name on his lips.  
“A million and two?” Zayn’s voice was hushed, the threat of tears cracking his voice with his heart.

“I’ll be yours til’ a million and three.” 

The winter was a rough, the sun sleeping earlier than the moon. Dusk came quickly.   
Over the months that summer gave way to fall and fall submitted to the harsh cold of winter, the school had become even more dangerous. Classes had stopped in favor of hiding. Hunters raided dorms more often than not.   
Liam continued to find his way into the arms of a vampire every night, despite the warning of danger from his peers. Despite the effort to keep them apart, it made no difference to the whispers of love and soft kisses beneath the moon. Zayn held his fear close to his heart, but held Liam closer while he slept. That was enough for them.   
Until it wasn’t. 

A growl ripped from Liams' throat as he watched Zayns’ receding back. Dark eyes were looking over his shoulder at him, panic filling them to the brim as he struggled.   
The sounds Liam made as he paced in front of the bars were feral, heated and pained as Zayn was dragged away from him.   
Control was a fickle thing as a wolf and Liam had lost it. Another night, another fight over something stupid because they were scared. They screamed about eternity, about the growth that they hadn’t yet done, growing up way too fast to catch up with themselves.   
It was a devious act, a shift. Liam had learned to control it rather well in his months at the school, but something about Zayn made his heart race and his blood boil faster than anything else. Maybe it was the fact that Zayn’s fangs had made an appearance when he dismissed Liam’s argument, or that he had slammed Liam’s back against the wall faster than he could blink.   
They had been angry, they had been loud and that had been their downfall.   
Raiders. Filling the campus to the brim before Zayn could even get his words out, hunters everywhere he turned.   
It was that moment when Liam felt the reins of his emotions being ripped from his hands, transferring into the bared teeth of the wolf that drove him. It was a snarling shift, bones snapping and fur surfacing as he fought to get closer to Zayn before he was stolen from him. 

Zayn was drained. He hadn’t eaten in the days before the fight. He was weaker than he should’ve been, but he was angry, spiteful. Liam had been pushing him too far and he knew it, but he ignored the signs. Zayn had been on the edge of losing it for weeks, full of fear and frustration.   
But he wasn’t angry with Liam, not really. Liam wasn’t really angry with him, not really.   
They wanted each other, forever and a day, but that wasn’t reality. Not really. 

The stress had been mounting, and Zayn stared at every blood bag handed to him with distaste. He rejected them, letting himself lose power, exhausting himself as his agitation and hunger mounted.   
Even then, he had known that Liam was right. But he wanted to fight, to let some of it out because he felt like if he spent another moment in silence that he would explode.   
So he fought. He fought Liam with everything he had and Liam fought back with just as much passion and they stood as equals. Even when Liam was stronger, faster, well rounded, he fought like he wasn’t. He fought because he knew Zayn needed it, and that only made him angrier.   
The raiders came just before the tears. After the crash of Liam into a wall, cracking the cement behind him, Zayn had stepped back, eyes wide. He looked stunned, and he had barely taken a step forward before Liam and whispered that it was okay, even if it wasn’t.   
Zayn didn’t get to Liam before the door opened and a bullet shot into the room. 

Zayn had gone down, the bullet was fast but Liam was faster. It was a trade, an eternity for a moment, and Zayn felt the pain of a bullet laced with wolfsbane just as fiercely as Liam did. Thunder rolled across the sky as Liam’s growl turned from animalistic to pure canine, light brown fur making its appearance as he grew into the wolf that prowled in the back of his mind.   
There was one thought that broke through the haze of pain and anger: protect, protect, protect. 

Liam could feel Zayn’s anguish through the wall that separated them. He could hear the shallow breaths clearer than anything else and the whines he released to let Zayn know that he was still here were nearly inaudible.   
Zayn heard them, loudly, perfectly clear.   
Liam could hear the whisper, “I’m sorry,” and his heart hurt more than his bullet wound. 

It was days before they had gotten to see each other.   
Liam’s fur was matted and Zayn had paled, bags under his eyes and his cheeks sunken in, the hunger pains forcing his movements to slow. The school had been overrun, raiders taking over in minutes. It was a war, a battle of wolves and blood and bullets. In the end, the raiders had lost, the wolves and the vampires locked away in classrooms were released. 

Seeing Zayn touched the human side of Liam deeper than he had ever thought it might. The red in Zayn’s eyes as he drank bag after bag wasn’t scary, nor was the way his fangs refused to retreat until he was satiated. Liam feared what another day would’ve done, he feared how much longer that Zayn had left in the cell.   
Liam dressed himself in an empty room for the first time in months while Zayn fed and he brought himself back to humanity.   
The dent in the stone wall was a reminder of why his chest ached, why there was healing bullet wound on his side, why Zayn wasn’t in his arms during the hours of sun.   
Yet, Zayn had come to him, a small smile playing on his lips right before he attached himself to Liam. It was a flurry of innocent kisses and the relieving feeling of safety they only felt in each other.   
Zayn’s lips were soft against his, pushing against him and pulling him back in after he took a breath.  
Push and pull, push and pull. 

Zayn painted the wall. He turned the crack into the illusion of a doorway, but Liam never asked why, just appreciated the way everything melted together to make sense in the end. The fights between them dwindled and the smiles returned with something that felt a little like falling in love all over again. 

Zayn’s birthday came as a surprise in January, when snow covered the ground and the nights were still long. The number eighteen meant nothing to him, time stopping in his youth so quickly. Liam was careful with him that day, the look on his face fragile when he sang ever so softly the tune to happy birthday.   
“I just want to feel the sun.” 

The words were whispered, like a small child telling a secret.   
Liam’s heart broke a little, and he fell a little more in love with the sad brown of Zayn’s eyes as he looked anywhere but Liam’s face. There was little to nothing that Liam wouldn’t provide for him, but some things are impossible, even in a life where magic thrives.   
But maybe that wasn’t as true as they were lead to believe. 

Three months later, Zayn found a necklace and note on his bed.   
He was tired. He waited for the sun to rise above the trees. 

With the symbol of infinity tied around his neck, he watched the sunrise without fear for the first time in over a year. 

Loving Zayn was a blessing and a curse, Liam decided after nine months. He came with a whirlwind of emotions. Happiness and affection, rage and fury, sadness and emptiness, all of them going hand in hand with what he felt was the best thing that had ever happened to him.   
Zayn was the closest thing that Liam would ever get in a smile, but the closest thing to a thunderstorm in personality. He could spend the rest of his days telling Zayn the reasons why he was loved, how lovely he was, but there was still doubt that prowled in his head like a panther waiting to pounce.   
The doubt led to fighting, led to Zayn slamming doors in his face, Liam whispering apologies through the bathroom door because he could smell the salt of his tears. 

Loving Liam was like a hurricane, so much debris and reckless actions that left Zayn exhausted. The fear in Zayn’s mind push at Liam, pushed him away at arms length as if a step away would keep his heart from breaking if he decided to walk away.   
Yet, in that space was enough to make them feel like they were breathing through a straw, unable to breathe, gasping for air and grasping at straws. The fear threatened to drown them both, but Liam was fully prepared to cough up water on his finally breath if it meant that he could feel Zayn’s lips on his without hesitation.   
Liam’s love was unconditional, his loyalty unfaltering and he looked at Zayn as if he was the only person on the planet. It made Zayn feel as though he was going to break, and it was all he could to keep his hands from shaking when Liam held them to keep him from falling to pieces.   
Things were changing, all of Zayn’s sharp edges were slowly being rounded down to smooth sweetness and affection by Liam’s sandpaper hands. 

Liam sang while Zayn painted with soft blues. The evening was peaceful, their last summer starting with the promise of adventure. Occasionally, Liam’s hands would find the hips of the painting vampire and he would press a kiss to the upturn of Zayn’s lips before leaving him again to write his heart into a song.   
There was something exceptionally lovely about the way the light danced on the tan of Zayn’s skin. He seemed to glow as he smiled softly at the wolf he had fallen in love with all those months ago, his heart feeling the way it felt to beat for the first time in a long time. 

Love lit them up.   
It lifted them with an elegance as the stumbled through the unknown, tripping over their own feet, hand in hand.   
“There is nothing I want more than to grow old with you.” Liam’s voice felt like needles sticking into a pincushion heart made of shattered glass. His eyes were light but sad, glossy and half lidded as he fought to keep the salt of his tear at bay.   
“I want this, want you.” There was a hand pressed to his cheek and he wanted to go forward, to bury himself in the scent of cinnamon that felt like home. He didn’t.   
There was nothing he hated more than retreating. He did it anyway. 

“But what’s real?” 

It wasn’t his tears that fell first.   
“What does that mean?” The voice that answered him shook with nothing to hide, shaking freely as the tears began to drown them both.   
“I love you more now than I will in a million and one years.” 

The response came quickly, practiced, rehearsed and so gentle that Liam thought that a touch would turn him to dust.   
“A million and two?” 

He stood, escaping the love he had cocooned himself in, watching the hand that had been holding him together fall into the lap of the person who he thought he would never leave.   
“I won’t be here for a million and three.” 

Vampirism was lonely, Zayn found.   
He found Liam’s clothes all over his room ,is scent embedded in everything. He couldn’t lay in his own bed without breathing in the smell of heartbreak.   
It was vanilla, it was honeysuckle it was Liam’s cologne. It felt like fire burning across his skin, lighting him up from inside like their first kiss with Zayn’s painting between. 

Zayn tried to be happy, but even in the mirror his fake smile looked pained. There were cracks in his porcelain facade, his broken heart bleeding through them and dripping onto the floor.   
He drew Liam, small portraits on slips on of paper with broken pencils because he couldn’t stare at something whole while he felt so incomplete.   
He drew sad brown eyes, wisps of brown hair that he loved to run his finger through. Sometimes he drew Liam’s hands that so perfectly in his own, were made for the curve of his jaw and made him feel more alive than anything else. 

In his own way, Liam drew Zayn into his songs. Line after line screamed of the distance between them, of the love that tugged at their hearts. He found paintbrushes, canvases, anything and everything that was Zayn’s.   
It was a graveyard and Liam appeared outside Zayn’s door during midday, stumbling in with tears coating his face and his fingertips before he recognized the sound of an empty room.   
The sunshine necklace lay lonesome in the midst of a mess, sitting still and calm in what looked to be the eye of the storm. Zayn’s scent was cool, the room had been vacated for a few hours at least and would continue to be full of stale air for at most a few more.   
Liam waited with the necklace in his hands. His tears dried but not until after he placed his scent on everything in the room, yet again. He could feel himself fading from the room, erasing itself with time. He traced his fingers on every surface, leaving a reminder of himself wherever he went. He found papers around the room with his face drawn in perfect detail, right down to the light scars he didn’t remember he had. He watched from the doorway as the sun began to set, and the mood began to rise. The night light beginning it journey as crickets and fireflies awoke.

“Why are you here?”   
And there it was, that Bradford bad boy accent, but with all the vulnerability that Liam wished he had never caused.   
Liam didn’t have an answer, didn’t have an explanation, so he pressed his lips firmly to the Zayn’s and it took only a moment for him to feel the pressure of hands pulling him closer.

The kiss was short lived. It spoke the volumes they could not, placed a sense of security in their souls. They stood there, intertwined for what felt like an eternity, a single forever.   
“I’m an idiot.” 

Zayn nodded, a smile so real that it melted the ice around the edges of his mind popping up on his face, and said, “I’m glad we’re finally on the same page.”   
The spent the next day together, ignoring the classes they were meant to be in during the dead of spring. Schooling, after the raids and the heartbreak and constant fear was low on the priority list, not just for them. The student body as a whole got a break to deal with their trauma and began to grow.   
Zayn stole the sweater that Liam was wearing off him, seemingly trying to suffocate himself with it. Liam knew he was angry, that he would be insecure and things would be different, but he wanted to enjoy the love while it lasted instead of dwelling on how it wouldn’t. 

They found the word ‘soul bond’ by accident.   
They sat in the library together, two in the morning creeping up on them with undeniable stealth.They were not alone in their late night wanderings, yet heart beats were few and far between at this time, creatures primarily out at night scouring the shelves for projects and research as well as leisure.   
Liam’s forehead was pressed against the wood of the table they sat at. He had fallen asleep ages ago, a whisper of Zayn’s name in his mouth paired with a goodnight.   
Zayn sat, reading diligently, with his elbows propped up and his dark eyes focused on the text in front of him, chin in one hand. His eyelids had begun to droop, but not so terribly much that the land of sleep would capture him as swiftly as it had Liam. 

‘Those who have a soul bond may experience deep distress when separated, an intense sense of loss, almost like the loss of a limb. Each party may have the experience of feeling the others pain, physical or otherwise.   
This type of bond happens majorly in the rare vampire and werewolf collaborative relationship. Because vampires, by the laws of the natural world, are in all technicality dead, soul bonds form in the place of what was once meant to be a mating bond. Whether the vampire was supposed to be a human mate, or turned werewolf mate, an extenuating circumstance made the real mating bond impossible. The partner must be living to perform any type of body-tied mating ritual, such as scent marking or bite marking.   
The bite of a werewolf is very dangerous and often deadly for a vampire, and the bite of a vampire is rejected and may cause intense torment to the wolf despite intention.   
Soul bonding rectifies this wrong.’


End file.
